


too much light in the sky

by unimate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unimate/pseuds/unimate
Summary: Both your flights are delayed, and as the plane circles the airport, waiting for a lightning storm to dissipate, you press your forehead against the cold plastic window and think don’t be gone, don’t be gone, please don’t be gone.(Five years after the events of Act 1, Roxy returns to Hauntswitch to look for her old charges.)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	too much light in the sky

You always mean to go back. 

It takes you five years. Babies aren’t like dogs. You can’t kennel them, and you aren’t taking Rose to Hauntswitch. You barely slept at all those first few months, dashing into her room every couple of hours to make sure she hasn’t stopped breathing or eaten her pillow or something like that. 

She is an unusually self-possessed child, however, and by the time she’s three you’ve calmed down enough to hire one of the girls from your job to stay with her for the week. It costs almost as much as the airfare, but whatever. You have way more money than sense. 

Both your flights are delayed, and as the plane circles the airport, waiting for a lightning storm to dissipate, you press your forehead against the cold plastic window and _think don’t be gone, don’t be gone, please don’t be gone._

-

The evening of November 11th, 1994, you’d been too smashed to notice anything off. Sober you might have seen the light on in the attic, or the thin line of smoke snaking away into the autumn sky. You would have noted the lack of sound from the tv, or Tesseract’s barks. You might have wondered why this grand house, already a crumbling tomb of mingled nostalgias and miseries, felt so very different. 

You didn’t even make it through the front door. A grey-skinned boy in sunglasses shoved a gun into your face and told you to take a walk. 

And you did. You’re still not exactly sure why. You were scared of getting shot, sure, but in the end you’ll blame it on the same internal pull that compelled you out to a wet field in upstate New York one cold December night, to await the arrival of a precious package. 

-

You check into a hotel at the edge of town and curl up on the bed with your feet underneath you. You order room service and then place a long-distance call to Houston. 

“You really think they’re still here?” The drawling consonants send a comforting wash of familiarity over you. “After five fuckin’ years?” 

“Where else would they go?” You transfer the phone from one ear to the other. “They’re teenagers.” 

Somewhere in the background a child shrieks. You’re not sure if it’s delight or terror. “Yeah, but they’re rich.” 

“So are you, but you don’t go anywhere.” 

“Suck my dick,” Dirk Strider tells you pleasantly. 

A few days after being rebuffed from your old job by a gremlin with a gun, you received a call from your bank telling you that a substantial sum had been deposited into your account by an anonymous donor. You busted into the bank’s central records, and hit walls everywhere you looked. But you did find evidence that a similar amount was deposited into another account, this one belonging to an amateur porn actor from Texas. Dirk has no idea who the money came from either, and he doesn’t really seem to care. 

“I’ll let you know how it goes,” you say. 

“I’m on the edge of my seat.” 

You hang up and drain your glass, wondering if you should order another martini. Better not to; you don’t have time to nurse a hangover. You can’t afford to pay the babysitter for more than a few days. 

The next morning you drive to Harley Manor, or as close as you can get. The property is surrounded by a chain link fence, its windows boarded up, a padlock on its tall front door. According to an attendant at the gas station on the corner, it’s been like that for years. 

Well, fine. Figures it won’t be that easy. 

The town is small enough that there’s only one high school. You sit in your rental car and watch the stream of students flow out the front doors and toward the bus lanes. Is it a Monday? It feels like a Monday

When the river becomes a trickle, you leave your car and walk into the lobby. The woman behind the front desk gives you a friendly, if slightly doubtful, smile. 

“Soooo...I’m here to pick up my niece and nephew. They were supposed to meet me in front of the school, but they didn’t come out. Could you...beep them?” You didn’t go to a school like this, you have no idea what the protocol is. You give the woman their names and she searches the register. 

“Harley, Harley...hmm. Looks like we had a Joey Harley enrolled here a few years ago, but she left during Freshman year. No one named Jude Harley has ever attended.” 

Fuck. “There’s gotta be other schools, though, right? Maybe private schools?” 

The woman’s lips thin. “I can’t give you that information.” 

“Look.” You lean forward conspiratorially. “I’m gonna be honest. They’re not related to me. They’re my friend’s kids. Her husband—he was abusive. Like. A huge fucking asshole.” 

“Oh,” the woman says faintly. “I’m so sorry. Can I—.” 

“He took the kids in the divorce, his lawyers totally beat up my friend’s lawyers. Like. In court. So I need to find them. I know you’re not supposed to, but—.”

The secretary’s wariness loosens just the slightest bit. “I’m sorry, but I just meant I don’t have access to the information. Only the school board would have access to every child in the system, and their files aren’t digital.” 

Right. This is the fucking boonies. 

The second night you get a whole bottle of wine sent up to your room. You call Dirk but he doesn’t pick up. 

Originally, you’d come to Hauntswitch for literally no reason; might as well have just thrown a dart at a map. Becoming the au pair for a couple of half-wild rich kids with a neglectful father definitely hadn’t been on your radar. You’d gone to meet them at a diner on main street, where you sat across from a mustachioed man with a broad mid-atlantic accent and the tendency to pat your hand. The son beamed at you; the daughter rolled her eyes and scoffed. You hadn’t really liked them, honestly, not at first. But you took the job anyway. They needed you. You needed each other. 

Neither of them were ever reported missing. Maybe there just hadn’t been anyone around to report, after you left. 

The hotel doesn’t have an Internet cafe, but you find one downtown. They always sound to you like they should serve coffee. You bring in your own and hide it from the fussy attendant. You check your email, and then log onto a couple message boards you’d known Jude to frequent. You’re not sure if Joey has ever touched a computer in her life, but you helped Jude set up his first desktop, and introduced him to a couple science fiction web rings. He didn’t use his real name online, of course, but you know a lot of his old aliases. You were one of the few people he trusted. 

You click through pages and pages of grey boxes and black text. Nothing from after November 11th, 1994. You backread, noting the posts becoming increasingly paranoid throughout the preceding months. Maybe you should have noticed. You’re hardly a picture of soporific restraint nowadays, but five years ago you were very rarely sober. 

After a quarter of an hour spent clicking through old comment threads, you create an account and leave an offhand comment wondering whatever happened to [USERNAME REDACTED]. You don’t really expect a response, but you _definitely_ don’t expect the post to disappear a few seconds after you hit send. 

You lean forward in your chair. “The fuck?” 

The old lady sitting next to you gives you a surly look. You narrowly resist giving her the middle finger. Go check your mail somewhere else, Grandma. 

You make another post, this time with a different one of Jude’s screen names. This one stays up longer, and you have to refresh the page a few times before it caches, but it’s gone. Like it never existed. Not even you could write a program so efficient and pinpointed. 

You poke around until your time runs out and you’re ousted by a college girl in a crop top and scrunchied braids. 

You forego room service and just stop by the liquor store on your way back to the hotel, picking up a cheap bottle of vodka and a cheaper mixer. 

_Hauntswitch Hotel_ is lit up glittering across the turnpike, sounding like the name of a zany sitcom like the ones you used to pass out in front of at 2am. The concierge nods at you as you go up. You wonder if he knows you as the boozy broad up in room 526 who racks up the phone bill calling someone who isn’t even her boyfriend. You wonder what anyone in this sleepy town makes of you. If they remember you. 

Maybe you should call up the babysitter and have her put Rose on, even though she’ll probably just try to eat the phone, or whatever. 

You aren’t quite sure what tips you off. Maybe you hear soft voices, or see a minute shift of shadow beneath the door. 

A peculiar fission runs up your spine as you slip the card into the mechanical lock. The door opens soundlessly. Two boys wait for you inside. The one at the window is slouched and dark, with some sort of headpiece jutting comically out of his hair. The other boy is perched on the edge of the bed. He stands up quickly when you come in. He’s got the lanky, coltish limbs of a recent growth spurt, and his hair needs to be cut. 

“I hope you saw the ‘firearm free establishment’ sign on the wall,” you tell the boy by the window. “I know how you like to put guns in people’s faces.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jude says, scratching the back of his head, even though that hadn’t been his fault. The boy with the—horns? Are they horns? The boy with the cartoon horns just shrugs and turns back to the window. You get the idea that he doesn’t want to be here. 

Jude breaks into one of those big sloppy grins. Something inside of you loosens just a bit. 

“You look--.” You don’t know how he looks. You don’t know what to say. “What are you doing here?” 

Jude sits back down on the edge of the bed. He seems more settled than he did at twelve, but that underlying thread of frenetic tension still coils into his movements. “We need to go underground for a while. Dammek didn’t want to come see you at all--.” 

The horned boy grunts. 

“--But I thought I should at least tell you I’m not dead.” Another smile. “I’m not dead.” 

You swallow the heat in your throat. “What about your sister?” 

Jude looks at his hands and the other guy looks at Jude. “She’s gone. Not dead! I mean, as far as I know.” He shrugs. “She’s gone where Dammek’s from.” 

From the look Dammek gives Jude’s slumping shoulders, he isn’t so convinced that Joey’s fine. The tips of your fingers go very cold. You want to wrench the top off the vodka bottle and take a swig. 

Jude gives you another smile, and this time you see the strain around his eyes. “Roxy, I’m glad you’re--well, I’m glad to see you.” 

Your chest tightens. He’s going to disappear again. He won’t even be a voice on the other end of a phone line. “I have a house,” you blurt out. 

Dammek and Jude give you similar shrewd looks. 

“You said you need somewhere to lay low,” you say. 

Jude’s already shaking his head. “Our base can’t be in a residential dwelling, we’ve got too much industrial equipment.” 

“Well.” You toss the margarita mix onto the bed and crack open the vodka. “How do you feel about secret labs?”


End file.
